Syria's cross-border salvos send message

BEIRUT Syria's cross-border attacks on Turkey in the past week look increasingly like they could be an intentional escalation meant to send a clear message to Ankara and beyond – that the crisis is simply too explosive to risk foreign military intervention.

With Turkey eager to defuse the crisis, the spillover of fighting is giving new life to a longshot political solution, with the Turks floating the idea of making President Bashar Assad's longtime vice president, Farouk al-Sharaa, interim leader if the president steps aside.

A military option, which would involve foreign powers that already have expressed a deep reluctance to getting involved in the crisis, is still off the table, analysts say, despite six days of retaliation against bombing from inside Syria.

“Syria is aware that Turkey cannot go a step further,” said Ali Tekin, professor of international relations at Ankara's Bilkent University. “The Turkish people don't want a war and there are no vital national interests at stake.”

The flare-up started Wednesday, when a shell fired from Syria slammed into a house in the Turkish village of Akcakale, killing two women and three children. That set off the most prolonged eruption of border violence since the uprising began in March 2011.

Although it was not clear whether Wednesday's shelling was intentional, Turkey quickly fired back and convened parliament for a vote to authorize further military operations.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cautioned Damascus not to test Turkey's “limits and determination.” But the Syrian shelling has continued.

“It's not an accident. You can't send shells across the border by mistake five days in a row,” said Mustafa Alani, an analyst of the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center, hours before shelling hit Turkey for a sixth day.

An activist group said Monday the number of people killed in Syria's conflict had passed 32,000.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it counted 32,079 dead as of Sunday – among them 22,980 civilians and civilians-turned fighters, 7,884 members of the Syrian military and 1,215 army defectors fighting alongside the rebels.

In the past week alone, more than 1,200 people were killed, according to the head of the Observatory, Rami Abdul-Rahman, who said he only counts named victims or deaths verified by other means, such as amateur video.

Also Monday, a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb near a Syrian intelligence compound on the outskirts of Damascus, an official said. There was no word on casualties.

The pro-government Al-Ikhbariya channel said the explosion in the Harasta suburb was followed by armed clashes. Syrian rebels are increasingly targeting security compounds in Damascus, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

According to Alani, the analyst, escalating the crisis serves as a reminder to NATO, Turkey and the West that Syria's civil war can inflame the region with lightning speed. The threat may pressure Western powers into drafting a political solution, part of which could involve Assad's exit from power, rather than “ending up like Gadhafi” – killed by rebels, he said.

As the skirmishes intensified last weekend, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu tried to redirect attention away from the military developments.

On Saturday, Davutoglu said Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa was a figure “whose hands are not contaminated in blood” and therefore was a possible figure to head a transitional administration.

Abdulbaset Sieda, the head of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, said Monday his group is willing to consider the proposal.

Sieda's comments appear to be a softening of the opposition's stance that it will accept nothing less than the ouster of the Assad regime and the president's inner circle. But this apparent change in heart could be a way for the opposition to appease its Turkish allies rather than a major shift toward a political settlement of the conflict.

Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi scoffed at the proposal, saying it reflects “obvious political and diplomatic confusion and blundering.”

Zoubi accused the Turkish government of behaving as though it had reverted to the geopolitics of Ottoman dominance that shaped the Middle East for more than 600 years, before that monarchy was abolished in 1922.

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